Drop a video on the box above. Balanced compression at 720p is chosen for you, which suits most phone videos you want to send or post. Press Compress video, watch the result on the page, and download it. The line under the player shows the new size and how much smaller it is than the original.
What makes a video file large
File size is the bitrate, meaning how many bits are stored for each second, multiplied by the length. Phones record at a high bitrate so the footage holds up to editing, which is why a minute of 1080p or 4K video often takes up 100 MB or more. A much lower bitrate looks almost the same on a phone screen, especially at a lower resolution, and that is where the savings come from.
| Video bitrate | Size per minute (video only) | Looks fine at |
|---|---|---|
| 5 Mbps | about 37 MB | 1080p |
| 2.5 Mbps | about 19 MB | 720p |
| 1 Mbps | about 7.5 MB | 480p |
| 0.5 Mbps | about 3.8 MB | 360p, simple scenes |
Sound adds about 1 MB per minute at the 128 kbps used here. Choose Remove sound for screen recordings or clips where the sound doesn't matter.
The options
- Compression: Balanced keeps good quality, Strong and Smallest trade more detail for a smaller file.
- Fit a size in MB: enter a limit, for example 25 for an email attachment. The tool works out the bitrate from the length of the clip. If the encoder overshoots, it compresses again with a lower bitrate, and steps the resolution down to 480p or 360p when that is the only way to fit. It tells you when it had to do that.
- Resolution: keep the original or scale to 1080p, 720p, 480p or 360p. The shorter side is scaled, so phone videos filmed upright stay upright.
- Start and End: cut the video to the part you need first. A shorter clip is the biggest saving of all.
The result is an MP4 with H.264 video and AAC sound, which plays on phones, computers, smart TVs and in most chat apps. A few browsers can't encode H.264; there the tool makes a WebM file instead and says so.
Speed and limits
Compression uses your browser's video encoder, which usually runs on the video hardware built into your device. How long it takes depends on the device and the length of the clip, and the progress bar shows how far it has got. Keep the tab open while it works. Very long or 4K videos need a lot of memory and can fail on phones; trimming them first helps. If a video is already compressed efficiently, the new file can come out no smaller, and the tool tells you when that happens.
The video never leaves your device. Nothing is uploaded, so a 500 MB file starts compressing straight away instead of waiting for an upload.
Related tools
Video to MP3 keeps only the sound, and Video to GIF turns a short clip into a loop. For other attachments that are too big, Compress PDF and the Image Compressor work the same way, on your device.
